Quest Professional business training has appointed Calacus as its retained UK public relations agency to provide PR support as it plans to expand its services.

Quest Professional, which includes the iconic Lucie Clayton brand along with Queen’s Secretarial College and St James’s, provides a wide range of business training courses for more than 200 students a year.

With a high percentage of students going into blue chip companies and the majority finding work within two months of completing their courses, Quest Professional is the leading training centre of its kind in the UK.

Quest Professional Director Jo Barnard said: “With university fees getting higher and more and more young people getting impatient about starting their careers as soon as possible, Quest Professional offers a viable alternative with practical business training.

“We have a superb record of securing jobs with blue chip companies for our students and with the economy still in a state of recovery, our business contacts need to know that the candidates we send to them can hit the ground running. Our training offers a complete range of skills that ensures candidates can undertake a variety of roles, which is so vitally important in the competitive jobs market.

“Calacus has excellent media contacts and will help us to communicate our own expertise and depth of knowledge both to prospective students and the businesses where they will later seek to work.”

Calacus Director David Alexander said: “Quest Professional has moved on from the days when Lucie Clayton taught etiquette and modeling and adapts its training courses to suit the developing needs of modern business.

“The fact that big businesses are taking on their apprentices speaks volumes for the great work that they’re doing. We’re delighted to be able to help Quest Professional to tell its story and help them to reinforce its position as the eminent business training centre in the UK.”

ENDS

NOTES TO EDITORS

The brands that underpin Quest have existed since 1912. Originally Queen’s Secretarial College, Quest Professional combines the former well-known businesses of Queen’s Secretarial College, Lucie Clayton, and St James’s and provides tailored training in skills for the modern business environment with an updated and progressive coaching and development approach.

Quest Professional offers a mixture of courses based on terms of up to 36 weeks, focused on the development of essential business skills. In the current environment of increased university fees, employer concern over the quality and relevance of some degrees in the business world, it is seen increasingly as a positive choice to university.

Quest Professional also has specific courses aimed at those who have graduated and are looking for business training following the completion of their degree. It is seen as the first step into committing to a career and taking life more seriously.

Quest Professional assists its graduates on completion of their course through its placement service to find employment in a world where there is fierce competition for jobs. Its reputation with employers in the business and professional job market greatly assist its graduates to gain employment following the completion of their course.

Quest Professional Managing Director Sean Morgan joined BE Limited in 2010, a group within the education sector whose businesses include Quest Professional and the Frances King School of English.

He provides strategic guidance for Quest and also works directly with Quest Professional apprentices on self awareness programmes, career development and explaining the workings of finance.

Quest Professional Director Jo Barnard started working for Sight & Sound Education Ltd in the late 1980s and quickly moved into contract business development for large public sector programmes.

She joined Lucie Clayton in 1997 and played an instrumental role in the merger with St James’s in 2003 and the subsequent sale and merger with Queen’s in 2006 which resulted in the formation of Quest. She was appointed Director of Quest in March 2010.

Quest has a superb record of placing its apprentices in jobs at blue chip companies including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Morgan Stanley, Grant Thornton, Nomura, Goldman Sachs, the Royal Bank of Scotland LK Bennett, and Christian Dior.